Page 73 of Endless Anger (Monsters Within #1)

ASHER

Weeks later, Foxe still looks like absolute shit, but at least he’s discharged and able to walk around, albeit with a bit of a limp.

His right arm is in a cast, and bandages cover a decent portion of his abdomen from where stab wounds and burns are still healing. There’s also a deep grooved scar between his eyebrows from where they did a skin graft to reconstruct part of his nose.

But…he’s here.

Sort of.

As he hobbles around his little apartment on the Aplana Island coast, I stand in the doorway, trying to ascertain what exactly is missing.

The light in his hazel eyes seems to have dulled. He doesn’t joke around quite as much, a somber expression having permanently etched itself onto his face. When he smiles, the gesture doesn’t quite translate.

“You want anything to drink?” he asks, leaning into his fridge. “My mom left some fresh lemonade when she dropped by this morning.”

My eyebrows quirk, and I glance around, noting the growing collection of potted plants covering nearly every flat surface of the living room and kitchen areas. “She come over often?”

“Jesus, twice a day every day. Like she’s afraid I’ll forget to take my medication unless she’s here to watch me do it.”

I’d say her bigger fear is him getting hooked on the pain pills, given his history, but I don’t mention that. I’m sure he already knows.

“But you love the attention, I bet,” I tease, flopping down on the dark green suede couch in his living room. I take the bag from my shoulder and settle it on my lap.

He slumps in a matching armchair, kicking his feet up on the glass coffee table between us. “Feels like I’ve fully regressed into being a child again, but hey. At least I don’t have to make myself supper any time soon.”

The smirk he gives is easy. Practiced. Still, I don’t comment on it.

“Anyway,” he says, shaking himself and leaning back. “Where’s your other half today?”

“She went back to Fury Hill to pack up her dorm, since she’ll be staying off-campus next semester.”

“I didn’t think that was allowed.”

“Well, it wasn’t. Until our moms went up there and threatened Bauer within an inch of his life. He’s pretty agreeable now that we all have a bunch of shit on him.”

Foxe snorts. “I’ll bet he is. It’s too bad you still haven’t burned the place down yet.”

“Working on it.”

He nods, blowing out a long breath. “What brings you around then?”

“Can’t a guy come check on his best friend without an ulterior motive?”

“Best friend, huh?” He gives me a look. “I know better.”

I wring my hands together and then unzip the bag on my lap, pulling out the wooden box that Lucy shoved into my hands all those weeks ago, accusing me of having some nefarious plan with it.

She wasn’t wrong, really, although this one had been a duplicate. I’m still not sure how it got there, or who made it, but I’m coming to accept that some things in life just don’t get answers.

But the real box was my doing, and the stuff I had tucked inside would have incinerated the forest surrounding the school. That was why I’d brought it.

After receiving that cryptic email, I’d decided to enroll at Avernia—just long enough to burn it to the ground and displace Lucy, forcing her to safety.

Then I got attacked before I could put it into motion. Once I’d taken care of that, I abandoned my goal to find Lucy, afraid that she’d be the next target in the woods. From there, she consumed my life, so I never got around to setting the fire at all.

Now, with the threat to Lucy at least contained for the moment, it hardly seems worth the trouble.

For me anyway.

Holding the box out, I cock an eyebrow at my cousin. “Thought you might want this.”

“Your box of paraphernalia? I’m touched, Asher. Truly.”

Asher. I think that might be the first time he’s called me by my actual name since we were kids.

Guilt blossoms like a fucking botanic garden in my gut, but I ignore it. That emotion does no one any good.

“I’ll leave torching Avernia to you if you’re interested.”

Foxe takes the container, staring down at it silently for several beats. “Do I look like I’m in any condition to be setting things on fire?”

“Doesn’t have to be right this second,” I tell him. “Or even a year from now. Do it when you’re ready, or don’t do it at all. Makes no difference to me. I just thought that having the option would help you sleep better at night.”

His chin lifts, the red rings around his eyes brightening as the light shifts on his face.

“If I’m having issues sleeping, I know you probably are too.” Patting my legs, I push back to my feet.

“You love me,” he says, a slow grin breaking out across his face.

It hits me in the center of my chest, that glimmer of the old Foxe. Makes me hopeful that he’s still around somewhere inside there.

“Don’t read too much into it.” Tossing a balled-up pair of socks at him from the coffee table, I head for the apartment’s entrance, shrugging on my coat.

“Hey, wait,” he says as I open the door, taking in the snow flurries drifting from the gray sky. “What’s that on your neck? New tattoo?”

Pausing, I bring my hand to the still-tender spot where neck meets shoulder and smirk to myself.

“Yeah,” I reply, recalling how my toes had curled when Lucy’s teeth indented my skin with their print. So much so that I got the impressions inked on my skin earlier, eager to be permanently marked by her. “It is.”

By the time I make it back to Avernia, Quincy’s closing Lucy’s dorm room, and the sky is pitch-black. Not even the stars have come out to play tonight.

I meet my sisters in Quincy’s office, where Noelle sits on the corner of the desk, swinging her legs back and forth. Her dark brown hair is tucked inside a black hood, her skin glowing with a light sheen of sweat, like she’s nervous, though I can’t imagine why.

Neither Quincy nor I have been informed as to why she deferred starting school this past semester, but I suppose it doesn’t entirely matter now that she’s enrolled in the theater program for the spring semester.

For a few months, all three Anderson kids will be in the exact same place, and I try to ignore the unease that crops up in my stomach at that notion, remembering the names in that cave.

Our names. Two unmarked, one crossed out.

It feels as if trouble is only just beginning.

And in a way, I guess it is.

“Do we have everything?” Quincy asks, shutting the office door behind her.

She’s wearing a black hoodie, pulled all the way to her chin, and a black knit cap pulled over her forehead. She walks to a filing cabinet against the far wall, tossing Noelle and I each a pair of black gloves.

“Blowtorch, lock-picking shit, kerosene…check.” Noelle rummages around in her canvas knapsack, nodding. “But I must remind you two that there is in fact time to back out.”

Quincy and I just look at her.

Noelle holds up her hands. “Okay, sorry, I just thought maybe you’d want to send a more…theatrical message, but I forgot I’m dealing with the silent twins.”

“Destruction is much more impactful when it happens while you’re sleeping,” Quincy says, wrenching open the door.

“Not my cup of tea, but I’m happy to be invited.” Noelle slings the bag over her shoulder, following our older sister out of the room.

I stare after them both for a few quiet seconds, wondering if this is something I should be dragging them into. Then again, neither of them is innocent.

The blood on an Anderson’s hands is there at birth. There’s no scrubbing it clean.

Embracing our cursed heritage is the only way to survive.

We wind up outside Dean Bauer’s campus home and get to quick work making the first floor of the Victorian building inaccessible, inside and out.

The double-paned windows are already made of bulletproof, reinforced glass according to the blueprints we dug up in the Obeliskos, so breaking one of them won’t be possible.

He’ll have to climb out of the second story if he wants to survive.

I pour the kerosene in a nice, neat little trail on the wraparound porch, inhaling the pungent odor as I come back to where Quincy and Noelle stand just off the steps. I take a match from the book in my pants pocket, strike one against the strip, and drop it on the porch.

Flames burst from that site and spread instantly, singeing a piece of my hair as I calmly descend the stairs and stand next to my sisters. We look up at the house as a light flips on upstairs, and then several more of the windows illuminate, likely as Bauer discovers the imminent danger he’s in.

I’m certain he’ll get out, even if it means making a fucking fool of himself. There’s no way that bastard is going down without a real fight.

We watch the fire rise, orange and bright yellows mixing with the night sky. Off in the distance, the Obeliskos’s clock tower chimes, signaling midnight. One of the windows upstairs opens, and Dean Bauer leans out to scream expletives at the three of us.

“Oof,” Noelle says, cringing. “Maybe doing this before I started classes wasn’t a good idea.”

“He would’ve hated you either way,” Quincy says with finality, spinning on her heels.

Noelle and I follow suit, ignoring the dean’s cries the way he ignored everything else going on this semester. I couldn’t give less of a fuck if he makes it out or not, frankly.

If Lucy wasn’t expecting me at her new apartment soon, I’d walk in and kill the fucker myself. Damn the consequences.

Anger can only be sated so much when it comes to people who’ve harmed the ones you love.

I fear I’ll be angry forever about what happened to Foxe and Lucy, but this helps keep it at bay. For now.

A lone figure stands in the shadows near the Lyceum, a briefcase in hand, watching as flames consume the dean’s house. The three of us continue walking as if we don’t see a thing.

Professor Dupont’s handsome, stoic face is half-lit by some of the streetlights, and as we pass him, Noelle stops in her tracks about a hundred feet away.

She stares, silent.

He looks back.

“Noelle?” Quincy asks, nudging her.